Ripple (XRP) which recently became the second largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, is continued upward trajectory, crossing the $3 per coin mark and inching close to $4. At press time, the altcoin was trading at an average of $3.79. The price rally for Ripple has surged almost 49,000 percent over the period of one year. The cryptocurrency pushed towards the $2 mark just last week, witnessing a 130% hike since Dec 27. This means that Ripple has established itself on the number two position with a market cap of $146 billion, which is now over half of the Bitcoin market cap.

Ripple gives tough competition to Rivalries

Bitcoin, which is an exclusive decentralized currency, Ripple created its coin XRP aiming at enterprises. Fundamentally, Ripple blossoms as a cross-border or international payments solution for bigger financial institutions. It utilizes blockchain technology but is not necessarily a decentralized chain, which might be one of the reasons that Banks and centralized models have trusted its blockchain.

At present, an intercontinental or cross-border payment sometimes can take a few days to complete and is also bound by high cost. Currently, a nuisance for banks is high-volume, nevertheless low-value, transactions the type that Facebook involves in while paying out to app makers, for example, can frequently expensive and unbeneficial for banks. These kinds of transactions take a lot of exertion to transmit the money and the percentage cut won't be as high as for a bigger transaction.

Ripple attempts to unravel this issue via its technology. XRP gives enterprises immediate liquidity, which is significant for a large transaction. And this is available without having to pay fees. XRP acts as a passage between fiat currencies during a transaction. Ripple said transactions in XRP can be established in four seconds, which is faster than any topmost cryptocurrencies at present.

Altcoins changing scenario

Investors and cryptocurrency enthusiasts have been chasing diverse altcoins at present as well as since last few months, creating considerable gains in the top 30. The majority of the gains are being witnessed in Cardano (ADA) and Stellar (XLM), which have surged more than 30% since past 24 hour period, as well as Status (SNT), which saw an over 100 percent hike in the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, on Bitcoin dominance is decreasing as the total market capitalization hit a new record low of 34.6 percent.

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